


family feud

by rappaccini



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: #numberfiveisoverparty, Alternate Universe- Five Never Left, Alternate Universe- Modern Technology In TUA-verse, Crack, F/M, Fandom Allusions & Cliches & References, Humor, M/M, Metafiction, Multi, References to Consensual Underage Sex (between pseudosiblings), Salt, Satire, The Author Regrets Nothing, five hargreeves breaks the internet, the power of teenage hormones shuts down the academy, yes incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:47:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22819489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rappaccini/pseuds/rappaccini
Summary: The decidedly less-than-familial relationships between the members of the Umbrella Academy leak to the public in the most chaotic way possible: live on television.
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves/Luther Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves/Diego Hargreeves/Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves/Klaus Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves/Klaus Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves, Reginald Hargreeves & The Hargreeves, and a split second of Grace Hargreeves/Diego Hargreeves
Comments: 119
Kudos: 616





	family feud

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moreghosthangirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moreghosthangirl/gifts), [lofticries](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lofticries/gifts), [whoever the op of the original prompt was](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=whoever+the+op+of+the+original+prompt+was).



> Fill of this prompt from umbrellakink:  
> "Reginald vs teenagers. AU Five stays, Ben lives. Doing public relations damage control as the relationships between his adopted kids come out. Luther/Allision, Diego/Klaus, Five/Vanya"
> 
> https://umbrellakink.dreamwidth.org/284.html?thread=89116
> 
> Lots of thanks to lofticries for yelling with me for two hours in our dms, which is where the plot essentially comes from; and to 263Adder for taking a peek at this before I posted!

Even with the power of hindsight, it’s impossible for anyone outside the Umbrella Academy to determine exactly when and between whom it started, only that the end result had been coming for a very, very long time.

As the years since their debut marched on, the children of the Umbrella Academy, while quite available to the public, would become excellently coached. Each of them would learn to perform a specific role for the entertainment of the crowds who gather outside the Hargreeves mansion to watch the children return home after a mission well done. Their performance complete, the children would file inside the monster of a mansion they called home, and until their next public outing, that would be that. 

There had always been slip-ups. Of course there had been. Small things, mostly, witnessed from a distance, seldom-recorded, and when they were, they’d been of such poor quality that they were easy enough to dismiss. The rumor mill would spark up now and then, whenever the gossip cycle was particularly slow, but it was never allowed to grow for long. Reginald Hargreeves, after all, would not have his pet project slandered in such a way. He will not have his toy soldiers celebrated for their vulnerability. With the strength of his billions, he could bury most stories before they breached the mainstream, and discredit the rest (At least, at first).

See, Reginald Hargreeves is careful and meticulous, but he isn’t nearly careful or meticulous _enough_. Though he prides himself as a master of manipulation, he truly has no idea how teenagers work. Though he single-handedly engineered the colonization of the moon, and masterminded ape sentience, he could never crack the mystery that was social media, and instead passed the danger-fraught experience of manning the Umbrella Academy’s official accounts off to his chimpanzee assistant. If one were brave enough to ask him exactly what a fandom was (as, at one point in time, after seeing a particularly explicit fan-drawing taped to the Academy’s gates, Ben would), he will have no answer. He knew that it existed, and that it was vital in maintaining mainstream relevance, which he wanted very much, but after investing twelve million dollars in an exhaustive and ultimately inconclusive study of the inner workings of the Star Wars fandom, he ultimately decided to do as he usually did when he failed to understand something, and pretended as though he did. 

Though many of the children’s public slip-ups were easy enough to disappear or dismiss through mass misinformation message board campaigns, a handful were downloaded and saved by particularly intrepid fans. Enough survived to cast a sense of doubt over the fandom regarding the Academy’s dynamics, a sense that maybe, just _maybe, we’re not wrong about this after all._

Of the many small incidents that would be later understood as a prelude to the chaos that would come, only four have emerged whole enough to be widely agreed-upon by the factions of the Academy’s fandom as indicative of substantial proof. The rest, shredded in the muddy chaos of the mid-aughts ship wars, or else mysteriously missing from the internet after circulating far enough to make a ripple in the fandom, would have to remain a mystery. 

The first had been a set of blurry photos captured by a particularly enterprising young paparazzo who’d dangled out of a sixth-story window and trained his long-distance lens on the Academy in the midst of battle.

The photos, which were of two of the boys (popularly believed to be Numbers Four and Six, though their identities tend to shift depending on which fan one speaks to) embracing after a near-death scenario in a manner that seemed decidedly less-than-familial, sold well to a public hungry for information about the Academy. They sent only the deeper echelons of the Academy’s fandom into a fervor. To the public at large, they’d been of too poor a quality, taken by inexperienced hands at too poor an angle. 

Besides, the internet had concluded, there was no real proof that the boys had been kissing. They could have been doing anything at all. 

(They had been doing exactly that.)

The second incident had been of a similar level of subtlety. It had been unearthed by an intrepid fan, combing over footage of a rare casual interview given by a group of the less-popular Academy children, and freezing, frame-by-frame, in order to capture enough evidence. The boys had been sprawled across the steps of the mansion like cats, lazily chatting at a crowd of teenagers who’d decided to spend an afternoon camping outside on the off chance that the Academy were to emerge. 

The interview itself had been brief and rather uneventful, only truly memorable (at least until the disaster that was to come would force the fanbase to comb over each and every scrap of media about the Academy with a new eye) for being one of the rare moments in which Number Two had been prompted to speak. 

Ordinarily, the boy did not say a word, only standing silent and grim beside Numbers One and Three as they soaked up attention like a smug cat would after it pissed all over its owner's keyboard. His appeal, according to his fan club, had been that of the strong and silent type, the dark and mysterious counterpart to Number One’s warm, family-friendly image.

(Said appeal had been manufactured intentionally at the behest of Reginald Hargreeves’ media experts, who explained that a Spike-And-Angel appeal would spice up the merchandise sales. Hargreeves, who had no idea what a Spike-or-Angel was, had shrugged and allowed it, for the sake of experimentation. It had been an overwhelming success.)

But in this instance, he smiled sweetly and, unused to being asked to speak, stumbled over his words like a three-year-old as he offered an opinion on the latest Harry Potter novel, which he hadn’t actually read, and had never seen in person until it had been dangled in front of his face moments later. It wasn’t until Number Four leaned over and carefully laid a hand over his that he would be able to string a sentence together. 

Though the stills of the boys’ hands touching would set a fire in the Umbrella Academy shipping fandom that would not die down for years, it was ultimately concluded by the mainstream media to be a breakdown of--

(“--conventional masculinity norms?” read a clueless Diego, “I mean… That works, right?”)

(“Whatever you want to call it,” replied Klaus, pulling him towards the bed. "Now bend over.")

Regardless, this would be the last of the Academy’s informal interviews. All interactions between the Academy and the outside world would then be filtered through a wall of flashing camera bulbs, and swarms of reporters. All would be conducted with their father hovering over their shoulders like a gargoyle. All would take place after an afternoon of coaching. 

At least, until Allison.™

The third incident would come some time later, after their names had been released to the public, because they could only be kept secret for so long after Number Three made her debut as Allison.™ 

(First name only, of course. Publicly, she asserts that her mononymic stage name is an homage to her all-time hero, Beyonce, but privately, it’s that Hargreeves is a mouthful, and ‘Allison’ on its own is a lot friendlier to marketing executives. Privately, Allison Hargreeves has never listened to a Beyonce song all the way through, nor will she ever. She does not care for Beyonce, and personally believes that, contrary to popular mass media comparisons, she is not the Beyonce of the Umbrella Academy, but rather that Beyonce is the Allison™ of Destiny's Child.)

Sick of being known mostly for being the Only Girl in the Academy, she’d leveraged her loyalty for a starring role in a series of unfortunately mediocre Disney Channel Original Movies, none of which would age well. She’d signed her contract in the morning, and spent the rest of the day cultivating Allison,™ learning her, shaping her into a mimicry of a teenage girl. 

The differences between the two were clear as day. Number Three was cool and acerbic, with a cold and imperial smile. She was different from you, she was _better_ than you, and she loved it. Allison's™ was enormous, splitting her face in two, well suited to a toothpaste commercial or a rollercoaster advertisement, but still entirely false. Number Three’s hair was unadorned and well-brushed. Allison's™ was stacked high in a tower of barrettes, choked by relaxer. Number Three covered her eyes with a domino mask. Allison™ smeared hers with gold glitter. Number Three wore the black jumpsuit that clung uncomfortably in parts of her body that the first tailor had not anticipated would develop between annual fittings, and that the second tailor had gone out of her way to accentuate, before she’d been given a restraining order. Allison™ wore the Disney Channel-mandated colorfully patterned layers of tank tops on tank tops on tank tops. And she was happy, so very happy, to do so, because though the child-star uniform was still just modest enough to placate slash-and-burn campaigns from One Million Moms, it didn’t cling to her throat like a dog collar. Not like the Academy one did.

Allison (no trademark, when in private) had been drunk on the color, on the patterns, on the personality of it all. She hadn’t remembered that the consequence of forgoing the awful black spandex would be the exposure of her neck, and the locket that Luther had leveraged six months of perfect behavior to beg Pogo to buy for her.

 _I hadn’t taken it off in years,_ she’d say later, _I just forgot about it._

The tabloids sure the fuck didn’t. 

For half a month, all anyone waved in her face to sign were cutouts of Tiger Beat, glossy photos of Allison™ with grainy zoom-ins on her necklace, “Who is her sweetheart?” in flowery not-quite-Barbie-pink text scribbled around her head. Had she not been in the throes of a panic attack at the idea of her father learning that she’d slipped up, she’d have found Klaus to crow about the hideous pun, and the terrible graphic design, and then to gloat about the size of her profile in comparison to those of the Clique Girlz and Jamie Lynn Spears.

Eyewitness accounts of Luther kissing Allison’s hand, at first buried under the standard fandom discourse-- “Normal siblings totally kiss each other like that,” being the most popular assertion-- suddenly became much more credible, and the article actually made a ripple in the minds of the public, unlike the boys’ slip-ups. Perhaps it was because she was famous, perhaps it was because she was pretty, perhaps it was because she was the Only Girl. Perhaps, it was because she was presumed to be straight. Perhaps, it was because she wasn't white, and the boy in question was, and focus groups and fandoms alike tend to shy away from such relationships. For reasons totally unrelated to Allison being Black, we're so _sure._

Whatever it was, Allison™ publicly handled it as she always did the things that bothered her. She whipped out that cool Number Three grin, lifted her chin, and signed their autographs, offering no explanation and no apology. On the set, she wrapped her words around the brains of the people who dared bring it up, squeezing until all memory of the article had burst out and trickled down the drain.

It had been too big to bury, given Allison's™ growing public appeal, so Reginald instead had arranged for a moderately forgettable teen heartthrob with a pouty face, an ethnicity that matched her own, and the first initial ‘L’ to be seen pressing a limp kiss to her cheek at her latest premiere, and that had been that. 

The secret buried beneath a flood of fresh press, Reginald had been content to allow Allison and Luther to continue their exceedingly slow, G-rated romance. He did not approve, of course, because his children were never meant to show loyalty to anyone other than him. But he’d allowed it, because Luther's temperament significantly improved whenever he remained unpunished for scribbling lists of potential names for the children he planned to have someday with Allison (there would be two, he'd decided, spaced several years apart, and at least one _must_ be a girl) on his notebook. And more importantly, it was the only way to keep Allison from packing her things and jetting off to Hollywood for good.

( _Give it time,_ Reginald had thought, _he’ll convince her to stay.)_

(Luther would not, in fact, convince her to stay.)

(Had certain events not unfolded, she would have convinced him to leave.)

At any rate, the locket was not the straw that broke the camel’s back.

There would be no denying as to what it was that shattered the Academy’s reputation permanently, an incident so bombastic, so unreal, that from the moment of its completion, it had seemed that there would be no other option for the Academy but to shamble towards its own dissolution. 

In the years to follow the incident, in many, many court-mandated group therapy sessions, the Hargreeves children would have ample time to determine when exactly the first domino that would lead to the disaster had fallen. It was ultimately concluded, after much debate, that the true beginning of the end was the day Number Five had noticed Vanya’s newly-developing chest.

This assertion is correct. 

That morning, Reginald Hargreeves, on the opposite end of the table, observing Five’s frequent glances at what was decidedly not Vanya’s face, felt a chill slither up his spine. The realization rung like a distant bell, echoing inside his mind as it had when he’d discovered Allison and Luther playing house in one of the rooftop greenhouses at thirteen: This, if not handled with surgical precision, would be a threat.

And, like all emotions, save contempt and disappointment, Reginald promptly swallowed it, and set to work.

Reginald Hargreeves had survived the death of a planet, of a species. He’d built a home, of sorts, in a world far from what was left of his own. He'd become an Olympic medalist. He’d built a billion-dollar empire off of an umbrella retailer. He’d created artificial intelligence, and sent a sentient chimpanzee to medical school. He’d hunted the Scimitar Oryx to extinction in the wild. He’d dealt with seven superpowered babies, and then six superpowered children. He is no stranger to struggle. 

However, nothing in his life would prepare him for the power of teenage hormones. Separating Vanya from Number Five would become the single most difficult task Reginald Hargreeves believed he would ever face.

(He never believed he would face the prospect of losing custody of each of his children, and a lifetime sentence in prison for charges of child abuse. And yet.)

At every turn, it seemed they’d have an answer to his attempts to keep the two apart. 

He changed Number Five’s training schedule, to ensure the two would not have any free time to waste together. Which, of course, had no effect on the time they spent together at night. 

He had locked both teenagers in their rooms each evening, and spent a blessed two weeks in ignorant overconfident bliss, before Number Five failed to reset the cameras in Vanya’s room and Hargreeves saw far more of his wards than he’d ever hoped to on his customary morning fast-fowarding of the previous night’s tapes. He would then realize the absolute lack of impact a locked door would have on a boy who’s spent his entire life mastering the art of teleportation.

So, as he had done before with a child who’d found their power was an effective means of disrespecting his authority, he decided to drug Number Five.

Not constantly, of course. He was far too valuable to the brand of the Academy to dispose of outright, and his power was far too useful to write off entirely. Only at dinner would Hargreeves inhibit Five’s ability to teleport, in the hopes that it would put an end to the madness.

It did not.

(He did not account for the fire escape outside Number Five’s window, or his years of endurance training, or the years of instructional mountain climbing records at lunchtime that had taught him exactly how to scale a vertical surface without any equipment. And it had been the records, more than anything, that had motivated Five to scale the side of the mansion to crawl into his sister’s window. The irony of using his father’s teachings in such a manner had just been too hilarious to pass up on, and he had spent eight minutes crowing about it to Vanya, before she removed her shirt and shut him up for the rest of the night.)

In the end, Hargreeves had opted to quietly slip birth control into Vanya’s morning oatmeal. As it was not a victory, he would not acknowledge it at all.

As he could not stop them completely, he decided instead to think of the attachment as an advantage. A way to keep his most rebellious recruit from up and leaving the Academy entirely. 

Again, Hargreeves miscalculated.

He would not anticipate that Five was capable of transporting more than himself with him when he made his spatial jumps.

As a result, the spare hours Five would spend sneaking his sister out of the Academy were their own. At least, until the paparazzi caught them.

The rest of the family, sans Klaus, who’d been suspiciously missing from the Hargreeves mansion when the cat flew out of the bag, would learn about the latest affair the way they found out about everything that teenagers did: through Allison’s magazines. 

Allison, flipping through the glossy pages of a third-rate teen gossip magazine for the images of her latest photoshoot her manager had promised she’d find there, instead stumbled across an image of Five, scowling in the doorway of a restaurant she immediately recognized as Griddy’s Doughnuts. 

The pale girl under his arm, squinting in confusion at the cameras, labeled by a bright orange pop-out insert as Number Five’s Mystery Girl, should have been instantly recognizable. But still, it took Allison a moment to realize it was Vanya. Perhaps it was because she simply never thought about Vanya. Perhaps it was because she’d never known Vanya to have left the house without their father in years. Perhaps it was because, of all the years she’d spent around cameras, she’d never known one to focus on Vanya. Perhaps it was because she’d hardly so much as looked at Vanya since they’d been thirteen, when she’d walked in on Allison’s first attempt to persuade Luther to approach first base.

Regardless, it’d taken exactly thirty seconds for Allison to process the photo, and for her shrill “Five, what the _FUCK?”_ to echo through the halls of the mansion.

No one arrived to indulge Allison’s cry for attention, and to add insult to injury, an entire page of TigerBeat, that by all rights should have been hers, had been invaded by Five and Vanya’s mediocre date. So, she decided to enact justice.

She did so by arriving at dinner fashionably late, whipping open the magazine, and loudly announcing to the entire family (sans Klaus, still missing) that Five and Vanya had in fact been dating. 

“Well,” Five had said, while Vanya had buried her face in her hands, “Fuck me, I guess.”

It would be that revelation, in glossy magazine paper, that would prompt Reginald Hargreeves to take drastic action. He’d started with summoning Number Five to his office, to inform him frankly that if the distractions continued, he would be sending Vanya to a boarding school at an undisclosed location out of the country. When Five’s face had turned a satisfactory shade of white, and when that night's security footage yielded the guilty parties pacing like caged lions in their rooms after hours, but ultimately curling up to sleep in their own beds, he’d then turned his focus to the outside of the Academy.

Every issue of the magazine containing the incriminating photos had to be pulled, the reporters responsible fired and blacklisted, paparazzo encouraged to quietly retire with a six-figure payoff. He’d intended for it to fade away entirely, as all the other slip-ups had. But the rumors swelled, because this circumstance was different. This was not a member of the Academy that Five had been caught with. This, as far as anyone knew, had been a civilian. _This,_ said the article to the legions of hormonal, insecure teenagers reading it, _could be you._

 _This_ was not acceptable.

So, Reginald Hargreeves coolly moved the Umbrella Academy’s annual appearance on the highest-rated late night show on television up a few weeks. 

And so history was made.

(An aside: the only true casualty of that fateful night must be noted. Please remove your hats, we must honor the victim.) 

([REDACTED], once the family-favorite late-night talk host, by far and away the most popular of them all, had inherited America’s favorite talk show after a successful stint on SNL in 1999. He’d been known for his wide artificial grin, eyes that had once sparkled with love for comedy and entertaining, nonthreatening fluff of brown hair, series of gray suits that varied slightly in shade and texture depending on the night, and a particular means of herding the talent he was forced by contract to interview that would go on to inspire Stanley Tucci’s development of the character of Caesar Flickerman. The latter was chiefly the reasoning for Hargreeves’ selection of him for the task of interviewing his children on live television.)

(In retaliation for the events to follow, his name would be scrubbed from public record, to such an extent that despite my own excessive probing into the identities of each of the late-night hosts active in the summer of 2005, I truly have no idea who the fuck this man is. One of the Jimmys? How many of them are there again? Four?)

(At any rate, his body has yet to be found.)

The preparation had gone as expected, with each of the teenagers having their hair coiffed, tight black uniforms mic’d, and concealer buffed into their dark circles and the angry red marks that the domino masks often left around their eyes. As usual, the siblings were sent off by their father with a customary threat to their access to half an hour of free time, and a pitying smile by Pogo, who resumed flagging Umbrella Academy edits for copyright violations, and blocking grown men and women who were proud adherents to the Umbrella Academy Countdown Clock.

As the siblings grew older, it became unbecoming for Reginald to accompany them on every press outing, but after five years of experience, he’d developed a reasonable amount of confidence that, at the minimum, they would contain themselves for fifteen minutes. After all, they were being watched by the entire world. Surely, that would be enough.

Tonight, as he has many times before, Reginald Hargreeves sits stiffly in the green room, denying every refreshment offered to him, and dictating notes to Pogo about improvements to be made to the siblings’ posture. Perhaps a rigid brace-like structure built into the backs of each of their uniforms. More research would be needed.

The interview itself begins dryly. The siblings had long ago become used to applause, to the hot glare of spotlights, to the flat, glassy stare of cameras. Allison™ beams at them hungrily, and Luther puffs himself up like a silverback, the clear favorites who’ll be doing most of the talking, who are happy to do most of the talking. 

Klaus, Ben and Diego simply settle into their places in the chairs behind the main couch, adopt a trio of indifferent faces, and try not to slouch as much as they usually do. Diego won’t be asked much beyond a handful of simple yes-and-no questions, and Klaus and Ben won’t be spoken to at all, beyond the customary greeting of each sibling at the very beginning, as if the 6.6 million people watching them right now don’t already know who they are. 

The questions had been sent to them the night before: the standard introduction, Allison's™ latest film role, the Academy’s latest mission, a few corny jokes they’ve all spent an hour last night practicing their pretend laughs specifically for, and then damage control for Five, followed by a demonstration of Diego and Luther's powers. The whole affair should take no more than fifteen minutes. Then, their father will nod at them coolly, Pogo will take them for doughnuts, and Five will sneak Vanya half of his when they return.

Allison™ dominates the discussion easily, gushing about her new role in a teen vampire romance film based on a novel that she absolutely did not rumor her agent and several producers into adapting. She cannot remember the names of any of her costars. She never learned them.

Luther gives polite answers about the Academy’s latest exploits in Paris, and offers a few family-friendly catchphrases he’d selected from a list of clever lines he and Ben had come up with several months before. He had been dutifully going down the list, crossing one or two off for every public function he was required to speak at ever since, and the light laughter he’d gotten from his latest joke made his ears turn bright pink. 

Diego says “yes” and then “no” and then he’s no longer required to speak, and that suits him just fine.

They laugh. Klaus takes a second longer than the rest to stop, so Ben gives him a sharp kick to the shin to remind him. By God he is _not_ going to fuck up their plans for this weekend’s free time. 

Three-fourths of the way through the interview, most of the siblings are enthused. None of the questions have been particularly hard-hitting, none of the jokes have failed to land, and the host had a habit of laughing blandly at whatever they’d said. Their guards fell, wrongly, believing that their weekend had been secured. 

And then, it was Number Five’s turn.

Throughout the interview, he’d been staring at the audience, and [REDACTED] imperiously, entertaining himself with the thought that the cameras were not so different at all from his mother’s eyes: glassy and perfect and totally cold. Recording everything, with no ability to keep private what is witnessed, and no intention at all.

(He will never say this out loud, not even to Vanya, due to a quiet superstition that somehow, Diego will hear the slight, and come for him.)

And then, it arrives: The incident that would ensue would be determined to be the all-time low moment for the Academy, resulting in chaos far more complete and destructive than the previous year's five-man battle royale for the last can of pomade in the house.

Out come the glossy blowups of the photos of Five’s disastrous date, pasted onto large cards monogrammed with the television show’s logo. Out comes Vanya’s face, and for the first time, someone outside her family is looking at it. 

Five isn’t shocked. He doesn’t flinch or blush or turn away bashfully at the sight of the photos in [REDACTED]’s hands. He doesn’t smile or laugh it off, when the jokes about his _little girlfriend_ ( _Girlfriend,_ he wants to spit, as if the word were an accurate summation of what she is to him) start rolling out of the host.

He’ll look unbothered, he’d decided long before he’d stepped onstage, when it had become obvious to him what the contents of his section of the interview would consist of. If they’re looking for regret, they won’t get it from him. 

Instead, he carries himself with a defiant, resentful sort of pride, the same that kept his shoulders rolled back and his eyes staring straight ahead when Grace escorted him back to his room after catching him pinning Vanya to the wall of a seldom-used hallway, with his hands up her skirt and his mouth on her neck.

 _We did it,_ he thought then, as he does now, _We did it and we liked it and we did it again, and what about it?_

He sits, calm and uninterested and barely-tamed as a housecat, and waits for [REDACTED] to take the hint. 

He does not.

The original plan, executed time and time again by [REDACTED] whenever a celebrity had a tabloid-frenzy around a relationship they or their management would prefer to keep quiet, was for [REDACTED] to lightly tease Number Five, belittling the relationship as nothing noteworthy. To make light of the incident, so it would be dismissed. 

The original plan did not account for Klaus. 

Klaus, whose high is beginning to wear off. Klaus, whose presence of mind is rapidly returning. 

Klaus, who was absent when the extent of Five and Vanya’s relationship became known to the siblings. 

Klaus, who now realizes with a rush of clarity with an impact roughly equivalent to taking a brick to the face (something that, as a member of the Umbrella Academy, and as a brother, Klaus has done several times, and twice willingly), exactly _what_ those bumping noises that have been keeping him awake every other night behind his Vanya-adjacent wall, are. 

(Dimly, Klaus recalls mentioning them to Vanya.)

(Dimly, he recalls her pursing her lips, then quietly suggesting that she hadn’t heard a thing. That he might be hearing ghosts trapped in the mansion walls.)

(Dimly, he recalls nodding dispassionately at her comment, and returning to the very important business of rolling his next blunt.)

(Dimly, Klaus thinks, _Well,_ _that was a fucking lie.)_

 _“Vanya?”_ he squawks, eyes bugging out of their sockets, “You’re with _Vanya?”_

And so it begins.

[REDACTED] blinks. He opens his mouth to speak, but Klaus does not care.

“So,” Klaus continues, leaning forward in his seat to loom over Five as best as he’s able, which isn’t particularly well, “You’ve been saying that for the entire time, all those noises I’ve heard through my wall at three in the morning weren’t ghosts. That Vanya was lying?”

Five raises a perfect eyebrow. It had been threaded without his consent earlier that evening.

Beside him, Allison is hiding her face, and Luther’s jaw is flapping. 

“How do you do it?” Klaus wonders, half-confused and half-reverent, “How do you two sneak around like that? What about the cameras? They’re even in the _showers_.”

“What?” asks [REDACTED], who is ignored.

“It’s not _that_ hard,” Five frowns, “I mean, I can teleport, and she lives down the hall from me.”

In the seconds that follow as the implication rolls across the audience, there is silence. The host blinks. The guests, save Five, squirm in their seats. The only sound is a single, vocal “oh my _God_ ” from six rows deep in the audience. 

“Oh, come on!” replies [REDACTED], flipping a switch in his mind and adopting the beaming, affable, crowd-pleasing grin that landed him the 10:30pm primetime slot. He reaches over, placing a hand on Number Five’s shoulder, which he immediately shrugs off with a scowl.

“Moving a little fast, aren’t we?” [REDACTED] quips, cocking his head. “Your girlfriend’s not _really_ living with you.”

(To the uninitiated, this is a cue, for Number Five to laugh, to blush, to shrug the incident off his shoulders, to confirm that he was joking, to clarify that he is not, in fact, fucking his sister.)

(In simpler terms, this is an out.)

(Number Five does not take it.)

(It must be stated that there is a popular and utterly false belief that Number Five had no idea what he was saying, that he had been moved by nothing more than an irrational fit of emotion, as posited by his guardian Sir Reginald Hargreeves in the countless court testimonies to follow.)

(In reality, Number Five considered very carefully the ramifications of not doing so, and decided upon it anyway.)

(In reality, Number Five had spent an agonizing week-and-a-half shamefully jerking off in a pillowcase to the mental image of his sister-girlfriend, and decided that if he was to suffer such an indignity, it would only be fair that the rest of the family should too.)

(In reality, Number Five really, _really_ wanted to start some shit.)

“Well, yeah,” he replies with his signature smile, the one pasted on lunchboxes all around the world, the one that assures the observant viewer that he knows exactly what hell he’s about to unleash and loves every second of it, “Why wouldn’t she? She’s my sister.”

In order for a person to have a heart attack, they must first have a heart. Therefore, Reginald Hargreeves, whose chest cavity contains only a withered, blackened little nut of an organ-- one that years later, during his autopsy, would make the coroner shout down the hall, “Ronnie, you’re not gonna _believe_ what I’m fucking seeing here,” -- Well. He does not collapse in pain. Instead, he sits perfectly still, waxlike, watching in disbelief. 

A storm of gasps rolls over the crowd. There are shouts from several mothers chaperoning elementary school students in Umbrella Academy costumes, clapping their hands over their children’s ears. There is a single hoot, from a questionable-looking middle-aged man in the audience who’d been banned from Umbrella Academy fanclub meetings earlier in the year for asking Allison cosplayers to spank him.

Reflexively, the other boys’ heads turn to Allison, who simply shakes her head, eyes wide.

For the first time in her life, she has absolutely no idea what to say. This is by far the most mortifying experience in her life, easily topping the time Diego read Luther’s sappier love poems (of which there were thirty-four) aloud in front of Five, and maybe even that incident when she’d shot her first action role, in which she’d learned only after the fact that the punches she was meant to throw had never been meant to hit their mark. The amount of rumoring she’d had to do to bury the incident had left her hoarse for a week, and even then, her father had been forced to pay several hospital bills and fund the director’s next project to keep it silent. 

Allison stares into the flat glass eyes of the cameras pointed in her direction and it is immediately obvious that there will be no keeping this silent.

 _Boy, Five_ , Allison thinks, _you sure fucking did it._

The heads of the audience ripple as they all immediately swing to focus on Allison, who, as the Only Girl in the Academy (at least, up until five seconds ago), is immediately under notice. 

The teenagers realize it at the same time: In the shock of it all, the audience has not processed that Five has outed the existence of a second sister. Somehow, they’ve forgotten Allison’s power. Somehow, they think the boys are looking at her, because _she_ is the sister Five is referring to. 

_The dipshits,_ Five thinks sourly, realizing that this is not one of his predicted outcomes.

“Not _Allison_ , you _idiots!”_ he hisses, “ _Vanya!_ My _other_ sister!”

He snatches the blowups out of [REDACTED]’s hands, hesitating only for a moment to frown at the angle at which his face was captured (which was quite unflattering), before tapping at Vanya’s silhouette.

“Does this _look_ like Allison?” he snaps at the audience, “Does it?”

(It very clearly does not.)

“No!” Five continues, “Of _course_ not! It’s Vanya!” 

It is at this moment, when Five is frothing at the mouth, poised to leap into the crowd, that Luther snaps out of his daze and remembers his responsibility to the team.

“Hey,” he says, reaching tentatively towards Five, like he would a rabid dog, “Five, you should sit down and--”

And at this moment, Diego realizes the power he holds, the way he can easily top that one time Luther had forgotten to close his fly before leaving for a mission, the way he can topple the golden boy and take his place as the most adored Academy member.

Diego draws the battle line, and takes the first shot, by smacking Luther’s hand down, and snarling: “Oh, don’t you fucking _start_. Not with that dry-ass, sappy, save-myself shit you’re doing with Allison. Lemme ask you, Luther? You two even do tongue yet?”

“That’s not important,” Luther muttered, slowly turning bright pink. 

(They had not.)

Allison, suddenly realizing with a start that she is no longer the center of attention, rises to her feet at once, digging her nails into Luther’s shoulder as she lunges past him to return the favor.

“Oh yeah, Diego?” she snarls, “Wasn’t your first kiss _Mom?”_

(It was. He had enjoyed it. Though he'll devote many future therapy sessions to attempting to understand why, he will never arrive at a conclusion, and will die haunted by that question.)

As Diego stutters, _something-something-but-she's-a-robot-so-it-doesn't-count_ , Klaus throws back his head and roars. “At least he’s getting _some_ action. The most Luther does with you is hold hands under the table. What Disney movie’d you learn that from, huh--” 

“ _Klaus,_ ” Allison puffs up like an enraged lioness and smiles her Number Three smile, showing far too many of her chemically whitened teeth. In the moments before she opens her mouth, each of her brothers realizes what she’s about to do. 

Klaus, who does not believe in God yet, suddenly feels the fear of Her buzzing into his bones, as he realizes what is about to happen. Ben, who is firm in his belief that God had abandoned them all long ago and has long been at peace with it, snatches his sister by the hair extensions, wrenching her head back to clamp a clammy palm over her mouth.

But Allison, who has spent her entire life training to prepare for situations such as this, simply flips him over her shoulder, and into the stage floor with a _thud_.

“Klaus,” she begins again, **_“I heard a rumor_ ** **that you told everyone here** **_exactly_ ** **what you were doing with Diego and Ben in the shower during free time.”**

“Oh my fucking _God,”_ says Ben, who has opted to remain on the floor, in the hopes that he might sink into it, and die. 

With the limited range of cognition Klaus has, due to the sheer amount of weed currently circulating in his system, he’s allowed a moment to consider his response.

Naturally, what comes out of his mouth is the dumbest of the options he considers. After all, it was _such_ a catchy name.

“We were having tentacle time,” Klaus says, before adding unnecessarily, “It’s how we keep Ben’s monsters happy.”

(They were. And it was.)

Save a flat “... Huh,” from Number Five, whose eyebrows appear to be trying to escape his face, the theater again is utterly silent. 

Ben rolls over, and buries his face in his hands. The tentacles nested in his body, due in no small part to what he had been using them for during free time, are too peaceful to do him the dignity of tearing him apart from the inside out.

“Is that a joke?” asks Allison, genuinely flabbergasted, then: “Wait. Stop. Don’t say anything else. I don’t want to know.”

Luther, as Number One, as the team’s leader, as America’s favorite golden boy, has been raised from birth to shut situations as disastrous as this down.

Luther, as a Hargreeves, has never attended a sexual education course in his life. 

But most of all, Luther, as a teenage boy, has one simple, pervasive thought that spills from his mouth before he can stop it.

“... So who puts what where?”

Diego, for lack of any projectiles to throw at Luther, opts to throw himself. They take the couch with them.

Klaus, seizing his chance, grabs Allison by the hair, and nobly does what Ben couldn’t. The two of them, at the least, are considerate enough to move their catfight to the other side of the host’s desk, a safe distance from Ben, who is still curled around himself on the floor, weighed down by the implications of What The Fuck Just Happened, and what it will likely mean for the college applications he is beginning in secret.

Five, forgotten by the chaos, had been angrily critiquing his photograph, and when a camera at last remembered that he existed, he fired off a quick snap at the paparazzo who’d taken it to kindly, “get my fucking _good side_ next time.”

And then had come the commercial break, from which the program would never return. 

The entire incident had lasted maybe two-and-a-half minutes. And for those two-and-a-half glorious minutes, it had been the most popular television program in the world, occupying the global top ten topics on Twitter, which it would keep well into the next morning, when reporters and YouTubers of questionable legitimacy would descend on the fiasco in a veritable feeding frenzy for ad revenue, contributing stranger and stranger theories as to the cause of the Hargreeves siblings’ dysfunction.

(One particular favorite would be the analysis of the cultural impact of a certain Folgers’ Coffee commercial on America’s impressionable youth, once the infamous photos of Number Five’s date would be reexamined, and it would be discovered that he had, in fact, been drinking coffee at the time.)

The Academy, who’d been ushered in an urgent jog out the back of the studio, and into their limousine, were momentarily naive to the effects of their outburst. They’d seen their father angry before, and were fairly desensitized to it, but none would claim to have seen his face turn such an interesting shade of purple as he snarled about their besmirching the family dignity.

(Number Five would earn a backhand-shaped bruise on his face for immediately firing back, “What dignity?”)

The first thing that strikes them as outright odd about the fallout was that their father and Pogo had both deemed it necessary to leave the six of them unattended in the limousine, as they rush off to ensure that the program would never return from its commercial break.

The second, as discovered by Ben when he found Pogo’s smartphone abandoned in a crevice between two of the expensive leather seats, is the concept of the Number Seven Truthers, and the curiously-titled top-ranked hashtag _#vanyagate_ (in second place: _#numberfiveisoverparty_ ). The Number Seven Truthers, once a niche corner of Umbrella Academy fandom, are producing their proof, now legitimized: a blurry image of Reginald Hargreeves, circa late 1989, leading seven baby carriages into his mansion. Their unofficial uniform, an I WANT TO BELIEVE t-shirt with a highly pixelated blowup of that seventh baby carriage, once only worn by a few fandom outcasts, is currently selling out across the globe. Ben takes a moment to order seven: one for each of the siblings, plus Pogo. He forgets about Vanya.

Ben has no time to reflect on the implications of what it all means, as he scrolls idly through the Academy’s feed, because then Luther opens his mouth.

“So,” he begins, still working his simple virgin mind around the concept of whatever the fuck Ben, Klaus and Diego were doing in the bathroom, “It’s like an orgy?”

“We’re not having orgies,” Ben groans.

“Wait, how many people make it an orgy?” wonders Diego.

“More,” says Ben succinctly.

“How do you know that? Have you ever been to one?”

“ _May_ -be,” Klaus grins.

“No,” Ben shoots him a withering look, “I haven’t. Neither has he.”

Allison scoffs.

“Besides, dude,” Ben turns back to the screen, “If I were going to an orgy, I’d totally invite you.”

“Really?” Luther beams.

“Yes,” Ben says, completely sincerely. He’s known for quite some time that Luther is painfully straight, but by God, he’s had plans for some time to be the subject of his inevitable drunken experimentation. “You wouldn’t believe what they’re saying about us.”

“Oh? Like what?”

“So,” Ben frowns, “A ton of our fans--”

A chorus of groans.

“A ton of them hate us now. But they love us. But they hate us. But all of these ones are saying that if we all break up, they’ll forgive us--”

“ _Forgive_ us? For what?” goes Five, to which Klaus replies, “Torturing me with sleep deprivation.”

“Break _up_?” whimpers Luther.

“They don’t _love_ me anymore?” squeaks Allison.

“Yeah, it’s… I have no idea. I can’t tell what they want. This girl wants to save Five, because she wants to be his girlfriend someday---” (Here Five scoffs) “--Yes, we know. You’re all about Vanya. We don’t need another speech, thanks. This lady thinks Allison should dump Luther and that’ll be how she... becomes a strong independent woman? Is that how feminism works, Allison? No? Alright. A bunch of people think that Klaus and Vanya are... best friends?"

"Really?" says Klaus, confounded, "You know, I haven't actually spoken to her in months, and I have no desire to change that." At Five's glare, he throws up his hands and hurriedly adds, "Well, I'm _sorry,_ Five, but your girlfriend's a total buzzkill! There's nothing to _say_ to her. Or _do_ with her. Even her meds aren't any fun. Ben, where's that even _coming_ from?"

"You got me there. A ton of what they've always thought about us has just been projection. Which, fine, whatever, but tonight it's just on another level. Like, I’m not even gonna _try_ and unpack all these people talking about you.”

“Why? What are they saying about me?”

"The only one I'm willing to read out loud is that you're an anti-incest hero for blowing the whistle on the family's abuse."

Klaus, who not one week ago had been voluntarily and enthusiastically spitroasted by two of his brothers, blinks slowly. "... What about the others?"

Ben stares soberly at Klaus. “You don’t want to know. You just don’t.”

“Sure I do.”

“No, you _don’t._ Now, here’s some fourteen-year-old--”

“--Of course, it’s a fucking fourteen-year-old--”

"--Five, we're _sixteen--_ "

"--There's a _big_ difference between fourteen and sixteen--"

“--Who wants to break into the house to save all of us--”

“--Oh please do!--”

“--But not Luther.”

Diego snorts. 

“Why everyone _but_ Luther?”

“Because she says that he’s like, the exact same as Dad, or something? That he basically deserves whatever happens to him?”

“The fuck?” 

“Yeah, there’s a lot of that here. Something-something, just-like-Dad, we-should-put-him-down. A few people are saying that about Vanya, too.”

 _“What.”_ Five leans in. Everyone else sensibly leans away.

“If it weren’t for all the death threats, it’d be pretty funny. See here? This conspiracy theory about Vanya being an actor? And that one about her seducing you away from them? Hang on, there's this huge group of people saying that Vanya's actually a lesbian. Guys, is she? Am I missing something?"

"I mean, I guess she might like girls, but given that she's going at it pretty enthusiastically with Five, so don't you think that means she likes guys?" asks Klaus. "Why _are_ they saying that?"

"It's kind of vague, but best I can figure is that if she's gay, Five's technically available again, so that means she isn't a threat anymore. Five's free, and if Vanya's gay, she isn't a rival, and you don't have to admit that you see a girl who you will never, ever, meet in real life as competition in a contest that doesn't even exist for a guy who doesn't know you exist and doesn't want anything to do with you."

"Or, so _she_ can date _them._ Vanya's about to have fans too, you know."

"I would never date them," Five says emphatically, "She would _never_ date them."

"And that doesn't matter. Now, a lot of our fandom-- not all of them, of course, but a _lot_ of them-- assumed that since Elliot Page plays Vanya, and Elliot Page then identified as a lesbian and had yet to come out, that Vanya had to be a lesbian too. Because as we all know, once we know you're gay, it renders you incapable of playing characters who aren't gay, regardless of how skilled an actor you are or the context of the situation you're acting in. Your sexual orientation-- once we know you're not straight, that is, because God knows this doesn't apply to straight people and we all know why-- is the most important thing about you to us, and it defines everything you do, especially your ability to do your job. And naturally, everyone's ignoring the possibility of Vanya being bisexual too, because everyone _loves_ to forget about people who aren't straight _or_ gay."

"Boy did those people eat their words a few years later, when all of a sudden it sure didn't matter at all if an actor's sexuality or gender identity matched up to the character they play," says Luther. "But only in the case of Vanya's gender identity. Funny that."

"Wow, it's almost as if characters aren't their actors, and actors aren't their characters, and insisting that's true only succeeds in fucking everyone over," says Allison, contemplating death.

"Oh, I get it," Klaus realizes, "These kids are too chickenshit to come out and admit they were thinking that, because it meant they'll have to do an inch of self-reflection and realize they've internalized some toxic shit, so they have to dress it up as some kind of moral stance to make sure no one can call them out on it."

"Exactly."

"Fucking wack."

"Yeah," Allison says, "And the same applies to Vanya being a girl, having sex with a guy they personally don't like."

"Like Leonard Peabody, in the alternate universe where season one of this television show takes place?"

"Precisely. It's too much to handle, you know. A girl having sex. With a guy. Who they personally don't like. Especially a guy who abuses her-- not that you do, of course, Five; I'm talking about that alternate universe version of Leonard in the canon of the show. And we're not allowed to like girls who have sex, or girls who have sex with men, or girls who have sex with men we don't like-- for any reason, mind you, whether he's _actually_ an asshole or whether you _personally_ just don't find him attractive; it's all the same, and God knows if Leonard were drop-dead gorgeous no one'd have a problem with him and Vanya-- because according to the fucked societal norms we're all beholden to, that makes them sluts, and we're not allowed to like sluts."

"Or even," interjects Luther, "In the case of that alternate universe version of Leonard, girls who exhibit sexual desire towards men who abuse them. Because it implies that, because she wanted to sleep with him, she was inviting his abuse, and therefore had it coming."

"Where'd you get that idea from?"

"Well, I think this has its roots in our fandom's TERF-infested, narrow-minded, sex-repulsed view of feminism, which hypocritically claims to promote feminism, yet believes that all women are inherently more delicate than men, seldom sexual, and morally superior, and that all men are inherently hypersexual, predatory and depraved, and therefore sex with men is an inherently oppressive act that subjugates women. What's more, entering relationships with men implies that you expected to be abused in some way, because you were entering a relationship with a man, whose intentions are inherently nefarious and who only wants to overpower and abuse you. Therefore, according to this mindset, Vanya only had herself to blame for being hurt, because she knew that's just what men do, and still agreed to it. Apparently." 

"But they like Vanya, and don't want to stop liking her, so they have to reframe what she did so they don't have to think about it anymore..." Klaus takes a break from thinking to resume snorting crushed-up Adderall off the limousine seat. He picked the wrong day to quit amphetamines.

"Ah! So that's why people have such a bone to pick with Allison and Luther being a couple."

Everyone snickers at the idea of Allison being dominated by Luther, or ever taking a passive seat in their relationship. Truly, an unthinkable concept. 

"Right," Allison scoffs. "We _all_ know that if I were a white boy, everyone would be _obsessed_ with me and Luther dating-- Thorki, anyone?-- and no one would say shit about us being technically related, or him supposedly abusing me (which hasn't happened yet, by the way) or our relationship being racist, or whatever excuse they're throwing out these days, because these idiots genuinely think I'd be happier if I were alone and celibate forever, and not in a sincere relationship with someone who loves, understands and respects me, whose feelings I return equally."

"Without a doubt."

"Oh, definitely."

"Shit's fucked." 

"Oh, I got it! Klaus, it's because they _like_ Vanya, and don't want to stop liking her, and can't recognize that toxic worldview for what it is, because it means they have to address it and acknowledge that they themselves have some personal growing to do. So to avoid doing both, they have to re-contextualize her sexuality in a way that absolves her of her agency. Thus, in their view, Vanya doesn't _actually_ want to have sex with guys, she's just acting out compulsory heterosexuality. She doesn't have sexual desire, especially not towards men, and she doesn't want to sleep with whatever sort of person you personally disapprove of; she's just confused, and therefore can be forgiven. _And,_ if she's gay, and not just bi, then there's no chance she can ever fall for another man you dislike, which means she'll be pure forever."

"Well said, Diego!"

"Right? And aside from that, all the actual evidence people seem to have beyond just _wanting_ her to be gay for self-insert stuff-- which isn't bad, by the way, I mean, they can be fun sometimes, but after a point, you think, _whoa there, you don't expect that to actually happen, do you? You don't actually think that if it does happen, that'd be good thing for the story, do you?--_ is that she's wearing her hair tied back, no makeup, a button-up and shorts instead of a skirt in that picture. Not sure if I want to dive into the implications of what they're saying there, especially since a bunch of them seem to think they're being revolutionary by saying that all lesbians, in addition to having been abused by men, dress like that--"

"Well, that's just ridiculous," scoffs Allison. "You don't have to be a lesbian to have terrible taste in fashion."

She raises a hand towards Klaus, expecting a high-five, which he delivers reflexively, adding with a flourish: "How 1970s of them." 

"--So," Ben continues, "The general consensus among this crowd is that if she comes out, and gets a good girlfriend to fix all her trauma and remove her from our... let me just directly quote this: 'toxic influence,' then she can be forgiven for her sins."

"God," Diego breathes.

"You don't think Vanya'll have to go along with it for the fans, do you?" Five asks.

"Oh, she'll definitely have to," says Allison, "I can already _sense_ the PR team hiring an army of boring one-dimensional love interests outside the family who don't understand us at all, and it'll all be to shut up the outrage about us all being together. I can totally see Vanya getting a girlfriend because they want to cover up that she and Five were ever together. They'll probably give you one too, Diego. And me, another one of those boring boyfriends I have to hang around at premieres. You know, the ones Dad makes sure are the same race as me for optics reasons? We'll be absolutely miserable, and no one will care."

Every single member of the Academy shivers in disgust.

Ben groans. "They're all calling you a homophobe, by the way, Five, because you'd rather date her than... let her be... gay? Even though she isn't? Oh, looks like they're calling Luther one too. No idea why."

"Wow."

"Man. Your fanclub's _so_ rabid about you two.”

“Number Five’s Future Wives?” gloats Klaus, as Five winces reflexively at the name, and the series of flashbacks to encounters with uncomfortably grabby fans it entails. “Can’t imagine why.”

“Are all of these people stupid?” Diego’s voice, as it often does, begins to rise and rise until he’s practically yelling, “What do they think? That they were gonna end up with _you?_ That any of _us_ would date any of _them?_ We don’t _know_ these people--”

“Diego,” Five says, “they can’t actually hear you.”

“Shut up, Five,” Diego snaps, twisting to point as menacingly as he can at Five, “Just shut up. You’re the reason why we’re all going to die tonight. You couldn’t keep your fucking mouth shut for ten minutes, and we’re all going to die. Dad’s going to have all of us killed for this, and it’s _your_ fault.”

Five shrugs. 

“Look,” Klaus says, “Let’s just be glad he didn’t leak one of the tapes of them going at it.”

“He wouldn’t,” Luther says.

“I would,” Five says.

He would.

(And inadvertently, he did. It had been his backup plan, in case Vanya had been sent to boarding school. Six copies were hidden in strategic locations throughout the mansion, for the purposes of blackmail. They will be found by Child Protective Services the next morning, and used in Reginald Hargreeves’ court trial in the weeks to come. In their mandatory group therapy sessions, each of the Hargreeves siblings will agree that it had ultimately been what enabled their emancipation. For now, there is a beat of uncomfortable silence, during which each of them is individually deciding to pretend as if they hadn't heard Five's assertion.)

“Hey,” says Allison, crawling over Ben’s shoulder to read, “What does cancelled mean? Is the show cancelled? Is Dad coming back already?”

At the words “Dad coming back,” the boys stiffen, like a litter of well-kicked puppies would at the approaching sound of their master's footfalls.

“No,” replies Ben, who pauses to allow his brothers to deflate, “I mean, you know Dad’s working on that. But that’s not what they’re talking about. Luther is.”

“For what?” 

“For… now hang on, this is all written in lowercase, and it’s by some handle called… Hey, Five, can you…”

“Sure,” Five leans in, clears his throat, and reads it dispassionately: _"Diegoscumslut."_

“My _what_.”

“No, Five, don’t repeat it,” Ben says, “Now, they’re saying that Luther is… cancelled, whatever that means, because as the leader of the team, he has been-- Now hang on, there are a bunch of big academic words being used here, and I don't think any of them are being used correctly-- abusing his authority and the unequal power dynamic in the team to… extract... sexual favors from Allison?”

“But we _haven’t even--”_

“Yes, Allison,” sighs Ben, “We know.”

“You should get on that,” Klaus offers.

“I’m trying,” Allison pouts quietly. Klaus pats her.

Luther, busy squinting at the blue-tinted iPhone screen, misses the exchange. He frowns at a term he keeps seeing repeated. “Hey Allison? What’s a bottom?”

Diego chokes.

“Because,” Luther continues, “Everyone’s saying that Ben’s one, and that Diego is… what’s that, a top?”

Klaus starts laughing, and doesn’t stop until their father returns.

The last thing the siblings would become aware of, before Ben would be required to toss Pogo’s smartphone across the limo due to the arrival of their father, and before they would be doomed to a long, icily quiet ride home, was the concept of the #freevanya movement, spearheaded by one Harold Jenkins in his juvenile detention center computer lab. A manifesto calling for the release of the poor, innocent girl from the clutches of her monstrous incestuous brother would be spread across Twitter, advocating for the Academy’s fans to storm the mansion and rescue her. Five, upon hearing about the petition, replied flippantly, “Try it.”

Of the thirty thousand shares the post gained, and the hundreds of Umbrella Academy fan club chapters active in the state who pledged their support, the vast majority do not go through with it. They instead continue to reblog and repost the manifesto, loudly announcing their support, and advocating for the rights of the mentally ill, members of the LGBT community, abuse victims, incest victims, trauma victims, women of color, and Not Luther Hargreeves from the comfort of their beds, by harassing the mentally ill, members of the LGBT community, victims of abuse, incest and trauma, and female fans of color. They'd done it. They'd Made A Difference.™

Exactly fifty-six fans actually show up the next morning. They are forty-four teenagers of varying ages, some of whom had required their parents to drive them to the mansion, plus twelve university students who had nothing more fulfilling to do in their lives than to stand outside the Academy’s headquarters and scream for two hours, before shuffling home, to lie in bed and scroll through Twitter.

Those who'd required their parents to drive them leave them at the curb. Said parents sit in front of their steering wheels, sipping their coffees and occasionally peering out at the crowd, wondering: _were there consequences to letting my underage child do whatever they wanted on the internet with no supervision while simultaneously policing everything they do and dancing around discussing issues like sexuality, personal preference and accountability with them?_ Each of them shakes their head. No, of course they're not to blame. It's the Umbrella Academy's fault.

Though a third of the crowd carry signs, only eight or nine are actually passionate about freeing Vanya Hargreeves. The rest simply want to gain internet clout by pretending that their motivation (which varies, but tends to average out around glimpsing their favorite Academy members and loudly proclaiming how they, as complete and total strangers, _personally_ know and understand them better than any of their siblings ever would) is based in moral nobility, so they will be able to guiltlessly spam their least favorite shipper’s inbox with anonymous hate comments when they return home, and revel in the mental rush of gaining hundreds of followers for doing so.

None attempt to enter the mansion, or even step onto the strip of sidewalk in front of it. They are far outnumbered by the presence of Child Protective Services, sixteen news vans, every social worker in the city, twenty-three opportunistic lawyers, a fire truck and a SWAT team, who’d also decided to enter the Hargreeves mansion, but for very different reasons. 

Reginald Hargreeves, who’d spent a sleepless night unsuccessfully pursuing the possibility of having the world’s social media platforms shut down and successfully firing, blacklisting and arranging for the [REDACTED] of [REDACTED], had wired several of his billions into bribing the police, media and Child Services, and was nervously waiting for the transactions to clear. To buy himself the time he wrongly believes he has, he stands on the stoop of his house and fields questions from dozens of rabid reporters. It will not work.

The siblings, who’d awoken to the chaos and at some point in their sleep had all slowly internalized the reality that the Academy _wouldn’t_ recover from this PR disaster, are forgotten in the chaos of the morning. They hang out of windows facing the street, watching the pitiful crowd of fans alternating between calling up to them, and shrieking insults at one another upon realizing which side of the great shipping schism their companions fell upon.

“Hey,” says Klaus, taking another hit from his morning blunt, “Should I go down to the kitchen and get some tomatoes or something? I feel like this could be really great for us.”

“Nah,” replies Diego, who is the only one of the siblings to witness the first shoe fly in the riot that will go on to result in the hospitalization of nearly a dozen twelve-to-seventeen year olds. “They’ve got it.”

“Oh. Great. Wanna put some money on who wins this shit?”

“Yes.”

“Diego, please,” Luther tries, as Allison peeks out from behind him to say, “Put me down for eighty on the girl with the bad purple dye job.”

"Done. Ben, who's your fighter?"

The siblings do not notice Vanya as she quietly pads up behind them. This in and of itself is not unusual to her, as she is quite used to being ignored on a constant basis. Even the crowd of fans swarming in front of the house isn’t particularly strange. Vanya, who is not allowed to watch television, assumes that the interview had gone extremely well.

Then, she processes what she sees.

Vanya stares. At the sheer number of news vans. At the sea of reporters facing her father. At the parade of flashing police cars skidding to an urgent halt in front of the door. At the dozen teenagers flailing in a quickly-thickening cloud of dust. At Klaus, hanging out the fourth-story window, shrieking: “HIT HER! HIT HER AGAIN!” 

At a handful of signs, reading: FREE VANYA, VANYA WE LOVE YOU, UMBRELLA ACADEMY FANS AGAINST INCEST, JAIL FOR FIVE, NUMBER SEVEN LIVES, DUMP VANYA FOR ME, GIVE VANYA A GIRLFRIEND ( _Girlfriend?_ Vanya, who is probably queer but is still parsing it out, thinks, _Why would I need one? Shouldn't I be focusing on overcoming my trauma with the people who best understand me, instead of pretending like it doesn't exist in order to date some underdeveloped female character who'll probably get fridged right after I sleep with her, or who I'll otherwise abandon?)_ , and most distressingly, one held by a twenty-four-year-old labeled VANYA SIT ON MY FACE.

... At Five, grinning triumphantly, as he reaches to her. She allows him to take her hand, but not anything more, frowning at the Dad's-backhand-shaped purple splotch on his face.

“Five,” Vanya says, hardly audible over the sound of the SWAT team charging over Reginald Hargreeves, and through the mansion’s front door, “What the _fuck_ did you do?”

Four stories below them, the thunder of a dozen armored policemens' boots begins to rumble throughout the house. The siblings, upon realizing that the house has been invaded, scatter like rats: Luther and Allison, to greet them with Stepford smiles. Ben, to crawl back into his bed and miserably wait for the chaos to end. Diego, to grab his knives and try his luck. Klaus, to flush as much of his contraband down one of the Academy's many toilets as he can. Five, to pull Vanya to him and promptly escape in a blue-white flash through a fold in space to somewhere where they might watch the chaos unfold from a safe distance.

When the smoke clears, and the shaky news camera footage depicts the raid on the Hargreeves mansion and its owner being strongarmed into a police van, only five of the now-seven known children are located, alongside a sentient chimpanzee and an android. The other two, several blocks away in the small parking lot outside of Griddy's, take a moment to watch another line of police cars fly by, wailing on their way to the mansion. 

After Vanya recovers from the nausea of teleportation, the two are announced to the mostly-empty diner's staff by the door chime's familiar ring. They slide side-by-side into a corner booth with peeling pleather seats and an excellent view of the television mounted on the wall, which is broadcasting footage of the mansion raid, and a replay of yesterday's late-night disaster with the words 'HARGREEVES SEX CULT' scrolling across the bottom of the screen. 

"Well, Five," Vanya says, after slowly processing the incident and its enormity, "You certainly did it."

"Yes," he agrees smugly, leaning down to rest his chin on her head, and glare at the preteens at the counter who are clearly livestreaming the pair with their iPhones. "I did."

She then sighs, realizing that the paparazzi, a legion of fans, and, in all likelihood, half of the city's social workers are likely on route to their location, and...

And, that for the first time, they will be looking at _her_ as much as they will be looking at Five.

After considering very carefully the ramifications of her choices, and what it will mean for her reputation, her brother's, and the fate of her family in what will surely be the most infamous child abuse case of the century, Vanya decides upon her next action anyway.

She turns, drinking in the look of delight on Five's face as she climbs into his lap, guides his hands up her skirt, and opts to initiate the most obnoxious public display of affection that the diner will ever experience. The door chime rings, and keeps ringing.

**Author's Note:**

> Note: As you can see from the 'date posted' in the fic description, this fic was written prior to 12/1/20, when Elliot Page came out. It has since been updated (on 12/2/20) to get rid of his deadname, and update the joke said name was used in.


End file.
